


The Hollow Rot

by VespidaeQueen



Series: The Gravity Well [8]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Demons, Depression, F/M, Gen, Grief, Post-All That Remains, Sources of Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:59:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2017194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For each loss, a piece of her magic goes as well. Her mother's death is yet another in a long line of failures, and it is one that shakes Hawke completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hollow Rot

**Author's Note:**

> As this fic is set directly after All That Remains, it deals primarily with grief and depression. The Hawke featured in this story is named Ismat, which she is called in the portions of the fic that are flashbacks of sorts, with the idea that she does not go by 'Hawke' until after her father's death.
> 
> At the core of this story is the idea that, for Ismat, her magic is deeply tied to her emotions and her connections to others. A lot of what occurs in this fic in regards to that is meant to lay groundwork for further stories which will expand upon how her magic evolves and changes over time.

9:34 Dragon, Spring

 

 Grief is a cold, tight knot that settles in her chest. It twists there and takes root, until she fears she may not be able to breath.

Three times before she has felt this, felt her heart ache so much she thinks it will burst or shatter. Father and Bethany and Carver, and now the ache settles in once more.

 _I cannot save anyone_ , Hawke thinks, and she sits in a chair too fine for someone with a heart such as hers, listening to her uncle yell and cast his own anger and grief upon her. With each word, something in her twists tighter and tighter, until something cracks. She is numb, her very core is numb, and though there is pressure behind her eyes, she does not cry.

Gamlen’s words wash over her, and not a thing he says is untrue. This is Hawke’s fault; she cannot save anyone.

 

*

 

“The root of the world is of ice,” her father tells her as they sit cross legged on the ground. They are far from where anyone will see them, and Malcolm has laid hexes to warn them of anyone’s approach. Ismat had watched him cast them with wide eyes.

No longer were these things that she would never know. Now, she had a chance to make them herself.

“The root of the world?” she asks, peering up at him. Her father is large and imposing, a great bear of a man with a big bushy beard and thick eyebrows. Today, Ismat is eleven, and her father is going to teach her about magic.

He nods at her question, and his face is very kind, a smile there that cannot be hidden by his beard. “Yes, the root. To the south, past the Wilds and the tundra, there is a land of ice.” He holds up a hand, and she thinks for a moment that he is conjuring sparks. Light glitters there on his fingertips, but she realizes quickly that it is not conjured light, but the sun shining upon crystals of ice.

She watches him intently, watches the ice as it does not melt away. “I made ice,” she says, and while she is proud of that fact, she is also frightened. It is not something she had intended to do; she had not meant to freeze a pond solid in an instant of panic. But she had. She can remember the look on her father’s face, the mixture of love and fear there. She is eleven, and she knows the world fears magic.

But her father is magic, and she does not fear him.

“Have you seen the ice, papa?” she asks him, for the idea of a land of ice is even more awe-inspiring than magic.

“Once,” her father tells her, and he lets the ice melt away from his fingertips. “Were you raised by my mother’s people, we would take you there, to show you what your ice magic is in its most basic form.”

“I want to see it!”

Malcolm smiles, almost wistfully. “I wish you could, Ismat. But it is far from here. For now, I can show you how to create ice from nothing. This will be _your_ root, my dear daughter, and it is from here we will build your magic.”

 

*

 

The hollowness in her chest does not leave when Gamlen does. For a long time, she sits before the fire, back bowed, arms rested on her legs, hands hanging limply before her. She stares at nothing, and she does not cry.

Later, they will burn what remains of her mother’s body upon a pyre. Her mother and so many other women. Dead and gone and burned to ash, and for what?

 _Love_ , she thinks, and it is a painful thought. She remembers the murderer’s words. He’d done it for the love of a dead woman.

The fire burns down to embers, and still Hawke sits there until, finally, she shakes herself and stands. The pressure behind her eyes is great, but she does not cry.

 _This is her fault_.

She is hollow as she walks from the study, hollow as she makes her way up the stairs. Before her is her mother’s room, and she turns away before the pressure builds too much.

There is a fire in her room, burning brighter than the one she had left in the study. There is food and drink left upon her desk, and Hawke thinks of Orana and her kindness and her father who she speaks of often, but will never see again.

She thinks of her own father’s coat, hanging in the wardrobe. She thinks of how she will never see him again, either. Or Bethany.

Or her mother.

She tries to sit down upon the bed, but misses. She falls to the ground, her back hitting the wooden frame of the bed hard. She does not try to get up.

 

*

 

It is an exercise, nothing more, to toss fire back and forth. Ismat stands several yards from her sister and moves her hand forward. An underhand throw, as though tossing a ball, and the small globe of fire arcs across the space between them.

Bethany squeaks as she tries to catch it. She reaches out and jumps, and the little ball of fire settles neatly into her palm.

“Good job, sister!” Ismat tells her, grinning widely. Bethany is ten, even younger than Ismat was when she first showed signs of magic. “Now, throw it back!”

Bethany stares at her with wide brown eyes, then a smile of her own blooms across her face. She throws her hand out and fire blooms in a graceful arc that trails through the sky. Ismat does not even need to move to catch it; her sister sends the fire straight to her.

“You’re a natural at this,” she tells her, and there is no jealousy in her voice. Bethany’s magic burns so bright, and Ismat is so, _so_ proud.

“Thank you, sister.” Bethany smiles shyly, tugging on the end of her braid. “I’m only doing what you told me.”

“Well, you are already a _much_ better fire mage than me.” Ismat wipes soot from her fingers. “Do you know what father says? That fire is the heart of the world. That he has seen mountains of fire, and that the dwarves know of fire that fills the very veins of the world. Isn’t that exciting?”

“A mountain of _fire?_ Oh, _sister!_ Do you think we will ever see one?”

“I think, with your magic, you could make one, Bethany,” Ismat tells her little sister, and Bethany glows.

 

*

 

There are footsteps in the doorway, but Hawke barely hears them. She barely hears Anders as he kneels beside her, his words of comfort dull in her ears.

“It’s my fault,” is what she says. “I didn’t try hard enough.”

“No.” His voice still sounds distant. “No, Hawke, don’t think that. You did everything you could. Your mother wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

“Wouldn’t she?” A laugh tears its way up her throat, surprising her. “You don’t know my mother.”

“I’m sorry I never will,” he says. Hawke turns her head to look at him, but she cannot quite meet his eyes. Sympathy hurts more than anger, and she feels tears threatening to spill more than before.

“I was supposed to protect them.” Her voice is little more than a whisper, an edge of laughter still there. She can’t stop it from rising up. It is obscene, to be laughing, even just a little. “I was the oldest, I was supposed to protect all of them.” She laughs, but it is more a choke, and when she inhales her breath catches horribly. “I was _supposed_ to be a protector. But I couldn’t save _any_ of them.” Her spine curves and her head hangs forward and her shoulders shake. “This is all such a joke, I can’t -” The pressure behind her eyes is too great, and she jams the heels of her hands against them. She presses so hard that she sees stars. Her breath is a gasp that catches under her breastbone. “I can’t save _anyone_.”

“ _Hawke_.”

She wants him to stop talking. He needs to go, him and his sympathy, or she’s going to break. He says her name and Hawke shakes.

“I can’t,” she says. Her fingernails claw at the skin of her forehead as she tries to hold her tears in. “I can’t, I _can’t_. Maker, I _can’t_. I _promised_.” She feels the burden of a family upon her shoulders, the burden of being the protector, the burden of failing. She’s failed so terribly.

“It’s all right,” Anders says, and she cannot look at him and his kindness. “I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

He touches her shoulder, and Hawke falls. Anger she can take. Hate, fear - she can take these things and keep going. She can endure accusations. She can take everyone else’s grief upon herself and never break, but this -

She falls against him, face still hidden in her hands. Hot tears spill over her cheeks, seep through her fingers.

Anders wraps his arms around her and gives her a place where she can cry.

 

*

 

“You can draw strength from the earth,” her father tells her. “Earth magic is strong. It grounds you, and if you use it right it can protect you from much the world can throw at you.

He shows her how to wrap rock and earth around herself, to make a shield against assailants. How to draw power from the stones around her to use against her enemies. How to make it bring them to a standstill.

She can protect with this magic, she thinks. Herself and others. She likes the way she can make the earth move to her whim, how she can build walls with it. She could trip a templar, she thinks, and the thought makes her giggle.

Earth magic is strong and solid - she discovers this as she casts spells at her father. He laughs as she catches his feet in mud and stone.

“Good! Very good, Ismat!

“What _are_ you two doing?” Leandra stands at the edge of the cleaning where they train. “Malcolm, please tell me you’re not going to drag all that mud into the house.”

“Of course not.” He steps to her side, mud halfway up his pant legs, kisses Leandra sloppily on the cheek. “We’ll wash up before we come in.” Then he looks to Ismat and smiles. “Our daughter is going to be an incredibly strong mage, love.”

 

*

 

Hawke dreams.

Here is her father, standing tall before her. Here is her sister, blood on her lips. Here is Carver, the taint in his veins. Here is her mother, her back turned to her, and when Hawke runs forward her skin peels away until only bones remain.

“No,” she says, as they each turn to ash and blow away. All but her father, who looks at her as though she is nothing.

 _You promised me you would protect them_ , he says, and his words shake her.

“I tried.” He _must_ believe her.

 _You failed. Everything you touch dies_.

This is wrong. This is so very wrong. Her father would never say such a thing.

Hawke looks up at her father’s face and sees there a demon.

 _You failed_ , it says again, in her father’s voice, and she screams.

 

*

 

She wakes next to Anders, curled against him with her face near his chest. He smells of sweat and ash, as he often does, and she idly wonders when he last bathed or washed his tunic before the weight of the day before comes crashing back down.

The nightmare has already left her uneasy, and the memory of her mother’s death pushes her even more onto unsteady ground. Still, she finds that she is hollow once more, that she has shed all the tears she can. She could weep, but her eyes are dry, all her tears spent sobbing late into the night upon Anders’ shoulder.

There is an unwell feeling in her stomach, and her eyes are gummy and raw from sleep and tears. Careful not to disturb him, she slips away from Anders and off the bed. He murmurs something, but does not wake, and Hawke is glad. It is well known that he does not sleep as much as he should, that he works himself to the bone. She will not wake him now.

She pads to the washbasin in the corner and fills it from the pitcher of water set there. For now, she washes only her face and her hands; she will bathe later. The water on her skin makes her feel better, soothing the lingering ache of tears from her eyes and cheeks. In the small mirror on the wall, she looks at herself. At her weary eyes and her tangled hair, at the way that sleep has made the contours of her face puff and bloat. She presses fingers against her cheekbones, at examining all the little scars and specks on her dark skin. At the hooked curve of her nose. There is a scratch that runs parallel to her mouth that has already scabbed over. She sees all of this, and yet all she really sees is a woman who failed to protect her family.

Hawke looks at herself and in that moment she hates herself more than she has hated anything in the world.

The air is cold, and the housedress she still wears is thin. When she opens the wardrobe, her father’s coat hangs there like an accusation. She is no longer the girl who could hide away from the world in her father’s arms, and her father is no longer in the world.

She takes a robe instead, leaving the coat behind, shutting the door so she does not have to see it. The robe is warm enough, and she pulls it tight around herself.

Anders still sleeps on the bed, undisturbed by her movement around the room, and she almost smiles. His feathered coat lies discarded on the ground, along with his boots. Slumber has eased the lines of his face until he looks almost peaceful.

Hawke casts one last look at him, then leaves the room.

There is a suffocating silence in the estate. It hits her as soon as she steps out into the hall. Light streams in through the windows, and it blinds her, makes her head ache.

The dull hollow feeling in her heart is still there, and she hurts. As she walks down the stairs, she does not look towards her mother’s room. She cannot.

 

*

 

She remembers the feel of fire. How it burned along her skin, through her veins. She remembers the thrill of calling flame forth from her skin, to watch it fall from the sky.

When Bethany dies, it is like all the fire in her is snuffed out. She cannot feel that fire in her anymore. Perhaps, she thinks, the piece of her heart that Bethany’s death carved out held all the magic of fire, and now she will never touch it again.

 

*

 

The day moves slowly, painfully, but she makes it through. They burn Leandra’s body on a pyre. She barely hears the words of the chant, and the blessing from Sebastian feels empty.

That night, Anders stays with her again. She does not ask him, cannot, but he stays and she is glad. She curls against him, eyes shut tight, head against his chest, and she listens to his heart beat.

Hawke dreams that she is drowning. She breathes as liquid fills her lungs, cold and suffocating. She thrashes and flails and tries to reach the surface. A hand reaches for her, dark and skeletal, and she grasps it tight and finds herself pulled up, until her head breaches the surface.

She gasps, looks up at the sky and a black city. Looks before her to see the hand grasping hers is bone and rotting flesh, follows the arm to a creature reeking of death and decay.

 _What despair you have_ , the demon says, leaning close to her. _What loss. Look at you, sinking beneath it. How will you hold yourself up?_

“I will endure,” she tells it, and spits water from her lungs into it’s face. The demon looks at her, then leans forward, and with it’s mouth gaping wide it swallows her.

 

*

 

Hawke wakes to feel her heart racing, sweat on her skin and dripping into her eyes. She tastes the salty tang of blood.

It is easier to get up without waking Anders this time; he has rolled to the side of the bed, his long limbs hanging over the edge. Hawke makes her way to the basin and the mirror, and when she looks at herself, she finds that she has bitten deeply into her lip in her sleep.

Water washes away blood, but does not take away the hollowness. Her mother is still dead. Nothing will change that.

She needs something to do. She needs it _desperately_.

Merrill comes to see her that day, and they sit in the study with tea and little cakes. Hawke’s mabari rolls around on the ground, demanding attention, and Merrill is happy to oblige. It is not a terrible day, and Hawke smiles genuinely for the first time in days.

But Merrill keeps casting her strange little glances, a worried furrow between her eyes, and eventually she leaves to dog and sits down in the armchair beside her.

“Hawke,” she says, her eyes wide and imploring. “Are you...are you all right?”

She blinks. It is such a silly question.

“I’m fine, Merrill,” she answers, which is so very far from the truth.

Merrill looks away for a moment, lips pursed in thought. “I wanted to ask. It’s not inappropriate to ask that, is it? Oh, no, it is, and I said everything all wrong…”

“I’m _fine_ , Merrill,” Hawke repeats, her voice soft. “Or I will be.”

Merrill chews her lip. “It’s only...I thought...there’s something different about you, Hawke, and I - well - that is to say, I hope that -”

“Please.” Hawke puts up a hand. “Please, don’t. I don’t want to talk about this today. Please.”

And the subject is dropped.

 

*

 

Her father teaches her that there is magic in the bones of the world. He teaches her how to call upon her own magic, how to weave it, how to direct it. He teaches her of ice and fire and earth, and then one day she comes to him with a question of her own.

“But what of the sky?” she asks, because while she likes the idea of how the earth protects, how fire burns, how ice freezes, there is something about the thought of lightning that sings to her. “Can I call a storm if I tried?”

Her father regards her with his warm blue eyes, and the smile on his mouth is almost mischievous. “You can try,” he tells her.

Ismat thinks of electricity, of lightning, of thunder. Beneath her, the earth grounds her, but she thinks of the sky and she draws a storm out of her heart.

 

*

 

She dreams of Carver that night, Carver as he was the last time she saw him. The way his dark skin had turned ashen, the way his eyes had become milky and blighted, the way that corruption rose so close to the surface of his skin that she could see it twisting beneath it.

 _Look at you, sister_ , he tells her as he lies there on the ground. _Great, grand mage like yourself, and you can’t do anything. You’re useless_.

“I saved you, Carver,” she tells him, and he laughs until black filth pours from his mouth.

_Oh, yes, you saved me. You have no idea, dear sister, what you did._

“ _I saved you_ ,” she repeats desperately, and Carver laughs and laughs and coughs and chokes, until there is only blighted blood around them, until she is drowning once more.

She wakes to find herself tangled in the sheets, the end wrapped around her neck. Carefully, she untangles herself, then sits on the edge of the bed until her heart has ceased its fearful race.

She has to do something. Something to take her mind off of everything.

Downstairs, she finds a missive from the Viscount upon her desk, and she leaps upon the chance to _do_ something eagerly.

Anders wakes as she dresses.

“You’re going out?” he asks, blinking at her owlishly, sleep still clouding his eyes.

“The Viscount requested an audience.” She pulls on her trousers, then looks to the wardrobe. Her father’s coat hangs there, and she almost reaches for it. Her hand trembles, and instead she pulls forth a heavy leather vest and straps it on. “I think it would do me some good to get out.”

Anders pushes himself out of bed and reaches for his clothing. She can count the ribs in his side as he moves.

“You should stay for breakfast,” she tells him as she adjusts her gloves, pulling them snuggly around her forearms.

“But...you’re going out,” he repeats, pulling his ratty tunic over his head.

“I’ll be back,” she tells him, though she is not completely certain _when_ that will be. “But I would be a poor host if I let you run off to your clinic without so much as a piece of toast!”

He doesn’t respond to that, not looking at her.

“... _are_ you going to your clinic?”

“Yes.”

She glances at him, at the way his shoulders are hunched, his expression tight. “Are you going to light the lantern there?”

He hasn’t, not in weeks. Not since what happened beneath the Gallows.

He is looking at his hands.

“No,” he finally says. “Not today. I can’t.”

“Okay.” Hawke steps over to him and takes his hands. She thinks she understands, at least a little bit. “Please, stay and have some breakfast?”

Anders looks up at her, and he gives her a small smile. The corners of his eyes crinkle, little spider threads. “All right, I will. But I can’t wait around for you all day, you know.”

“I wouldn’t expect it.” She leans down and kisses him once, very softly, then pulls away. “I’ll be back after I finish this business with the Viscount.”

 

*

 

Her father is dying. She knows it, and there is a blind panic in her gut as she sits at his bedside.

“Ismat,” he says, and though his voice is strong, his body is wasting away. She cannot heal, but even if she could, she cannot fix this. “When I am gone, you must keep everyone safe. You must be their protector when I can no longer be.”

“Father…” She takes his large hand in her own.

“You must promise me,” he says. “You will keep our family safe. You are a Hawke, and we protect those who we love. As I have protected you, so must you protect them.”

“I will, father,” she says. She sits there with him into the night, and by the time morning comes, he is dead.

Her family mourns, as does she. But she will be strong, and she will protect them as he had.

It is a week later, the first time she has tried to cast magic since they set fire to his body, that she can no longer draw frost forth from nothing. She is never again able to conjure ice; that magic is lost to her.

 

*

 

If there is one thing she had never expected to happen in her life, it was to get into a fight within a Chantry.

Petrice really does bring out the worst in her.

She does not want to hurt anyone here. Not even with Saemus dead before at the feet of Andraste. The blame for this she lays on Petrice, no one else, but it is her and Aveline against many, and they bear down upon them with anger.

She roots her feet to the ground, holds her staff tightly in one hand. She does not like the idea of what she is about to do - while she is not the most devout, she does not like the idea of tearing up the stones of the Chantry floor to immobilize this mob.

The magic is there, she knows it. She pulls at the earth, at the stones. Thinks of how she wants them to rise up and catch those who are in this room and hold them still. She pulls and -

There is _nothing._

Her stance falters. Her magic fails. Her heart stutters in her chest, a new fissure of pain appearing.

She should have known. She should have expected this.

For each of the lost, a piece of her magic leaves her, never to return. Ice and fire and now earth.

She tries again, panic rising up in her chest. _No, not this_. She doesn’t want this painful reminder of another loss.

When she falters, one of the mob takes the opportunity to hit her solidly in the back with a shovel - a makeshift weapon, but it _hurts_. Staggered, it takes her a moment to recover, but when she does she drops low and spins, striking out with her staff to knock the woman down.

No earth to anchor her. No fire to burn within. No ice anchor. But she has other skills and other magics, and right now she cannot mourn the loss of another part of herself.

 

 

*

 

The walk home is long. She is weary, tired, and the world feels ever more like it has reached the point of collapsing. The image of the Viscount cradling his dead son’s body does not leave her mind’s eye. She sees him, a tired man who has lost everything he holds dear, and she understands the defeat on his shoulders.

Part of her wants to give up. Wants to bow her head and let herself cry. Yell at the world for how unfair, how horrible it is. There is a part of her that would not weep to see this city drown in blood.

Anders is not there when she returns home. Hawke does not know why she expects him to be there - they have not talked about this, save for a few words said in passing weeks ago, before everything had turned to ash and horror. He does not live here, and she has not asked him to stay this night. Still, without him the bed feels lonely, the estate large and empty.

Even so, it is easier to fall asleep than to think, and she curls up beneath blankets before the fire.

She dreams of her grief, a great gaping hole in her chest. When she looks down, the dream tells her that she has no heart there, just little strings of crimson that stretch out and away from her.

Following them through the dream, she comes to a clearing spotted with wildflowers. Their edges blur, their colors bleeding into each other. In the center, she sees her sister; in her hands, the deep red of her heart.

 _Your heart desires so much_ , her sister says, winding the crimson threads around her fingers until Hawke stands before her. _Look, see how it has broken._

Her sister turns the heart around in her hands, and she sees how pieces of it are missing.

 _You could have them back_ , whispers her sister. _All of them. You are powerful, your heart is strong. Think of how much power you would wield, should I put your heart back together_.

Hawke looks at her, and in an instant the edges of her sister turn in upon themselves. There is a demon at her center, holding Hawke’s heart in her hands.

“You are not my sister.”

The demon laughs and tugs at the strings. Hawke stumbles, finds herself nose to nose with the creature that no longer looks anything like Bethany.

 _I can give you your family back,_ the desire demon says. _You can have everything as it was before. Father, mother, sister, even that brother of yours. All alive, all untainted. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? More than anything?_

“Yes,” Hawke says. She feels sluggish, like the dream is holding her fast. The demon smiles, showing too many sharp, white teeth. “But there’s no deal you can make that will truly bring them back. _Be gone_.”

She throws her will behind it, and the demon shrieks, then tears Hawke’s heart out of her chest.

 

*

 

Someone is screaming. It takes Hawke a moment to realize that it is her.

There are demons in her dreams. Oh, Maker, she has been dreaming with one foot in the Fade for days now, and there are demons stalking her.

She claws her way from the bed, falls off the edge hard enough to jar her bones. Her fingers flatten over her chest, over her heart, and when they come away she is relieved to see no blood staining them.

How does she fix this? How does she fix this, when her heart aches and her soul grieves and she has failed in everything else?

She stands. Walks to the wash basin and the mirror there and looks at herself. Then she laughs, harsh and hollow.

“Okay,” she says to no one in particular. “All right.”

There is a knock on her door. She walks to it and opens it far enough to see Bodhan standing there.

“That friend of yours, the Captain of the Guard, is here to see you, Messere,” he tells her, and Hawke thanks him. She dresses quickly, not wanting to keep Aveline waiting long.

By the time she walks out of her room, there are raised voices in the main hall. There, she finds Isabela and Aveline. There, she finds a choice.

And she makes it. If Isabela has a way that might end things with the qunari with minimal bloodshed, then she will have faith in her.

They go, once more, in search of a book.

 

*

 

The city is on fire.

She flees with Aveline from the docks to the sounds of screaming. Lowtown is aflame; the qunari are taking the city.

They meet them at the base of the great stairs leading up from the docks, find Varric and Merrill and _Anders_. The look of relief on his face when he sees her cuts straight to her heart.

“You’re safe,” he says, and for just a moment - a brief moment - Hawke ignores everything else. He catches her in a tight hug, his face buried against her hair. “Thank the Maker. I thought -”

“I’m all right.” Hawke pulls away so she can see his face. “I’m fine.”

“Darktown is flooded with people trying to get away from all of this.”

“The qunari are trying to take the city.” Hawke does not want to, but she lets him go, turns to speak to the rest of them. “I couldn’t stop this from happening. But…”

She looks up at the city before them. Hears the screams. The sound of a city under siege. Something in her hardens, locks down tight. Her grief and her anger and her pain she pushes down, because now is not the time. Her lost magic she forgets about, for now.

At the top of the stairs, she sees qunari. Her hands tighten on her staff.

“I’m going to protect this city,” she says. “Are you all coming?”

She does not wait to see if they do. The stairs she takes by twos, until she is close enough, and when she does she draws on the first bit of magic that she reaches for. Something raw, something painful, something that swarms around the qunari that come closest. A miasma rises around her, thick and choking, and she thinks _oh, this is new_.

Perhaps in all her loss, she has gained something as well.

Her father had taught her how to use magic. To draw from the world and from dreams and from herself. But she had somehow missed a connection, somehow missed what made her magic both weak and strong.

Hawke pulls on her pain and her grief and her anger, and casts it all away from her and into those who would harm her city. They stumble. They are blinded. They choked on fear and despair, and give the rest of them opportunity to strike them down. Hawke clears a path through the city, and when she comes before the Arishok, she is not afraid.

When Isabela returns, tome in hand, and the Arishok demands a duel, there is only one real choice.

Hawke takes it, and then she makes the Arishok choke on her own fear.


End file.
